Reports of its death are exaggerated

Classical music, struggling for an audience, is going through awkward times

AS RECENTLY as a decade ago, the great tradition of classical music seemed prosperous, its position as a central pillar of culture beyond dispute. But over the past few years, that assumption has cracked. The market is shrinking: an ageing audience is not being replaced by younger listeners. In a desperate bid to appeal to them, classical music has been diluted into crossover projects, featuring easy-listening melodies performed by winsome soloists. To the general public, “classical” has come to mean anything with strings, including film scores and television commercials.

Taken together, these three books offer illuminating—but very different—perspectives on what is happening. Norman Lebrecht, the author of “The Life and Death of Classical Music”, can fairly claim the doom-laden turf as his own. A long-time critic of the venality and corruption of the classical music establishment, his latest volume continues the attack, this time concentrating on recording. Those familiar with Mr Lebrecht's style will know what to expect. He tells a ripping yarn, packed with facts, vignettes and thumbnail sketches. His hyperventilating prose revels in racy detail: “when green-suited Frank Lee was caught with a catamite in Zurich on a company trip, he was sacked on the spot.”

However, if the reader can survive the breathless pace, the tale is worth the telling. The records that Caruso made in 1902 launched not just a mega-industry but a 20th-century phenomenon. Recording laid open the world of classical music to millions of people, bringing its wonders to their homes. Stars were created and fortunes made; conductors and soloists became household names. The allure was heightened by a string of technical innovations: from 78s to the LP to stereo to the compact disc, there seemed no end to what the recorded product could offer.

But as Mr Lebrecht reveals, the handwriting was already on the wall. The sequence of ear-catching new formats created an illusion of prosperity that fuelled the record companies' taste for excess. Bloated reputations and salaries sent costs soaring, far beyond what could be recouped by sales and the actual size of the market. By the late 1990s, as Mr Lebrecht puts it, the whole industry found itself in meltdown, a panic impelling cutbacks, mergers and the abandonment of the traditional repertoire.

“An art form had come to an end,” intones Mr Lebrecht. But his sensationalised obituary is premature. Plenty of small independent record labels are flourishing, supported by plenty of music-lovers, not to mention the brave new world of downloading from the internet. Media-savvy companies routinely include online sales in their promotions: one enterprising firm even offers individual movements from symphonies at £1 ($2) a time.

Helen Wallace's engrossing history of Boosey & Hawkes (B&H), a music publisher, provides further proof of classical music's vitality. More judicious than Mr Lebrecht's tome, it outlines the often vexed relationship between creative temperaments and their commercial representatives—who can be quite temperamental too. Since its founding in 1930, B&H has published many of the most eminent modern composers, from Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok and Aaron Copland to such present-day luminaries as John Adams, Harrison Birtwistle and Steve Reich. One of its earliest discoveries was Benjamin Britten, who worked with the house happily for years until his favourite member of staff was dismissed—so he went as well.

Such conflicts are par for the course as B&H contends with personality clashes, takeover bids, transatlantic tensions, war, fraud and changes in taste. But the firm's outlook remains confident and committed, reflecting a belief that the art it stands for will continue to communicate its riches to whoever listens.

But how do you get people to listen to classical music in a profoundly non-classical age? Lawrence Kramer tackles this question in “Why Classical Music Still Matters”. Other writers have ranged classical and popular music against each other, an antithesis Mr Kramer abjures. He frequently invokes popular culture, referring to the way in which films and television use classical music's special properties—its mixture of complexity, depth and order—to convey different realities.

Those are the qualities that give classical music its particular value, encouraging listeners to reach for similar characteristics in their lives. Mr Kramer traces his passionate, persuasive argument through chapters on the significance of melody, the transcendent effect of song, the particular appeal of the piano and music as a repository of mythic images. His last chapter, describing how a subway busker reduces a crowd of scurrying New Yorkers to rapt silence with a Bach violin sonata, is an appropriate image for our times, a sign that classical music does indeed still matter.